The jet impingement phenomenon plays an important role among the heat transfer intensification methods. Very often its application and analyses refer to simple flat surfaces, while there is a lack of information in the literature for cases addressing curved surfaces. In the present work, the single jet impingement on the non-flat (concave and convex) surface is studied for a wide range of geometries, which originate from the mini-jet heat-exchanger design. The numerical simulations were performed by an advanced ζ-f turbulence model implemented in the open-source OpenFOAM (ESI-OpenCFD Ltd, Bracknell, United Kingdom) code. Noticeable differences in the phenomena occurring on the convex and concave surfaces were identified in the stagnation zone. Besides, the existence and location of the secondary peak in the Nusselt number distribution differed between the cases. These distributions were influenced by the shape of geometry, which determined flow characteristics and resulting heat transfer performance. The origins of these differences were looked at in the turbulence characteristics close to the impinged surface of the stagnations zone and its vicinity, where turbulence kinetic energy and enstrophy were analysed. It was stated that the differences are already noticeable for the single jet impingement case, but they might sum up when multiple jets are considered. Therefore, here presented results would be important for the analysis of the overall unit of mentioned mini-jets heat-exchanger.

One of the methods of heat transfer enhancement is utilization of the turbulent impinging jets, which were recently applied, for example, in the heat exchangers. Their positive impact on the heat transfer performance was proven, but many questions related to the origin of this impact are still unanswered. In general, the wall-jet interaction and the near-wall turbulence are supposed to be its main reason, but their accurate numerical analysis is still very challenging. The authors’ aim was to construct the numerical model which can represent the real phenomena with good or very good accuracy. Starting with an analysis of single jet and obtaining the agreement with experimental data, it will be possible to extend the model towards the whole minijets heat exchanger. The OpenFOAM software, Bracknell, UK was used for that purpose, with our own implementation of the ζ-f turbulence model. The most difficult area to model is the stagnation region, where the thermal effects are the most intensive and, at the same time, strongly affected by the conditions in the pipe/nozzle/orifice of various size (conventional, mini, micro), from which the jet is injected. In the following article, summary of authors’ findings, regarding significance of the velocity profile and turbulence intensity at the jet place of discharge are presented. In addition, qualitative analysis of the heat transfer enhancement is included, in relation to the inlet conditions. In the stagnation point, Nusselt number differences reached the 10%, while, in general, its discrepancy in relation to inlet conditions was up to 23%.

Jet impingement is a method of the heat transfer enhancement applied in the engineering systems. The idea is to generate fast-flow fluid jet which impinge on the heated (or cooled) surface, causing significantly higher heat transfer rate. Although some flat surface jet impingement cases are described in the literature, the validated data is still limited. The reason is coming from the fact, that these flows are hydrodynamically complex. Therefore the numerical analysis is necessary to understand the phenomena, especially in the range of turbulent flow. The well-known and accurate method is Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach. However, depending on the applied turbulence model, various results can be obtained. The reason is that the jet impingement strongly depends on the complex boundary layer effects and their resolving is still challenging for RANS models and until now it is their weakest point. In the paper, the hydrodynamic and thermal, numerical results of jet impingement are presented, depending on selected RANS based models. The aim was to indicate their ability to anticipate the turbulence parameters.

Most of the flows occurring in the engineering systems are turbulent and their accurate numerical analysis is still challenging, especially when combined with the heat transfer. One of the methods of heat transfer enhancement is utilization of the turbulent impinging jets, which were recently applied also in the heat exchangers. Their positive impact on the heat transfer performance was proven, but many questions related to its origin are still unanswered. In general, the wall-jet interaction and the near-wall turbulence are supposed to be its main reason. The authors are interested in construction of the numerical model assuring the results as close as possible to the experimental one and then modelling the transport processes in the heat exchanger. The most difficult area to model is the stagnation region, where the thermal effects are strongly affected by the conditions in the pipe/nozzle/orifice, from which the jet is originated. In the following article, summary of authors’ findings, regarding significance of the velocity profile or turbulence intensity at the inlet, are presented. In addition, qualitative analysis of the heat transfer enhancement is included, in relation to the inlet conditions.

Accurate numerical reconstruction of heat and mass transfer processes in particular applications, such a jet impingement, is difficult to obtain even with the use of modern computational methods. In the proposed paper, the flow and thermal phenomena occurring during single minijet impingement on the flat, concave and convex, heated surfaces were considered. Problem of impingement on non-flat surface, still not common and purely described in the literature, can be of big importance in engineering applications, such as the heat exchangers. Numerical analyses, based on the mass, momentum and energy conservation laws, were conducted with the OpenFOAM software. Focus was placed on the proper model construction, in which turbulence and boundary layer modelling was crucial, due to their significance in the heat transfer processes. Analysis of results obtained by RANS models focused mostly on the comparison of turbulent and hydrodynamics parameters.

Jet impingement still is one of demanding cases regarding computational fluid dynamics, due to its highly turbulent behaviour, with occurrence of turbulent-laminar transition. Even recently developed methods exhibit some drawbacks - RANS based simulations lack accuracy, LES and DNS based ones require too much computational time. Hybrid methods also exist, but their development and validation is in progress. Nevertheless, CFD application can play major role in the investigation of jet impingement phenomena. While the flat surface impingement is widely discussed in the literature, there is lack of data regarding non-flat surfaces - the ones that might exist for example in the heat exchangers. In the following paper, the numerical simulation of both flat and non-flat surfaces single jet impingement is presented, with the aim of precise description of the turbulence models impact on the thermal and hydrodynamic results. Choice of turbulence model is crucial for sufficient calculation outcome. Only the complex analyses, shown in the article, including the turbulence and momentum budgets comparison between particular models, can reveal significant and meaningful differences.